Gingrich on the Alabama & Mississippi results: "It's only a flesh wound!"

Just a little this n'that after the results of Tuesday's voting in Alabama, Mississippi, Hawaii, and American Samoa.

1) Headlines vs. Delegate Count -- If I may summarize the vast sweeping headlines that followed: "Santorum triumphs in Mississippi and Alabama! Gingrich campaign shattered. Romney finishes third"

So if we all agree on the big loser (Gingrich) who was the big winner on Tuesday?  Here are the results by vote percentage, with the winner in bold. (All stats courtesy of the New York Times primary results pages.):

Alabama -- Gingrich, 29.3%; Paul, 5.0%; Romney, 29.0%; Santorum, 34.5%.
Mississippi -- Gingrich, 31.2%; Paul, 4.4%; Romney, 30.6%; Santorum, 32.8%.
Hawaii -- Gingrich, 11.0%; Paul, 18.3%; Romney, 45.4%; Santorum, 25.3%.
American Samoa -- Gingrich, 0.0%; Paul, 0.0%; Romney, 100.0%; Santorum, 0.0%.

(I have no idea how American Samoa ended up at 100%, but presumably it's a side-effect of some sort of caucus consensus rule.)

So, if you look at those results, Santorum rolls over the opposition in the GOP Southern heartland of Alabama and Mississipi, while Romney manages to capture a couple more island contests.

Now, let's see how that translates in delegates:

Alabama -- Gingrich, 12; Paul, 0; Romney, 11; Santorum, 19.
Mississippi -- Gingrich, 12; Paul, 0; Romney, 14; Santorum, 13.
Hawaii -- Gingrich, 0; Paul, 1; Romney, 9; Santorum, 4.
American Samoa -- Gingrich, 0; Paul, 0; Romney, 9; Santorum, 0.
Total -- Gingrich, 24; Paul, 1; Romney, 43; Santorum, 36.

So, even though Santorum won the headlines, Mitt Romney won more delegates on Tuesday, extending his lead over Santorum by another seven delegates.  And although he finished third in the popular vote, Romney (14) also won more delegates in Mississippi than Santorum (13) or Gingrich (12) by dint of winning more Congressional districts.  In terms of their main goal in these primaries (win enough delegates to clinch the nomination) Romney had the best day.  However, the news cycle for the next 24 hours for Romney was mostly filled with news about his third-place finishes on Tuesday night. The Hawaii and Samoan results came in long after the next day's news banners had already been chosen.

The takeaway? The headlines and cable-news banners in this race aren't always reflective of what really happened. There was truth to the damage that Gingrich's campaign suffered badly from the results. But if you want to know which campaign is really winning this thing, pay attention to the delegate counts.

2) Newt Gingrich is a dead parrot -- I came across a bit on MSNBC last night comparing Gingrich at this point to The Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, especially in claiming that the Alabama and Mississippi results were "only a flesh wound." That comparison has a lot of merit. Gingrich's speech following his disappointing results was a classic piece of denialism from a candidate whose candidacy has now reached its end. He continued to talk about the results as if they were a moral victory of some sort, but if you watch the video and look at the expressions on the faces in the background, they tell the true story.

(Actually, my favorite part was when he said that the "elite media" keeps trying to claim that the race is over and Romney has this thing wrapped up. In truth, the media would love nothing more than for this race to go all the way to a brokered convention. A brokered convention for either party is the dream event of every "elite media" political reporter who has ever wielded a keyboard or microphone.)

Tuesday was a mortal wound for the Gingrich candidacy, even if he manages to convince his backers to keep funding some sort of skeleton campaign that will limp through another few weeks. Campaigns run on hope, and the only plausible path to the nomination for Newt Gingrich included a tight hold on the South and victories in Alabama and Mississippi.  If Newt Gingrich couldn't win in Alabama and Mississippi, he can't win the nomination. The pressure on Gingrich to drop out will now grow quickly.

3) Going forward, the path and the math -- Nate Silver did a really good piece in his fivethirtyeight.com blog last week about the delegate math going forward that's very much worth reading.

The big takeaway from that analysis for my purposes is that the delegate math to get Rick Santorum to 1,144 (the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination) is getting pretty steep. Santorum trails Romney by nearly 250 delegates at this point.  Since Romney's support has been steady and genuinely strong among some groups (suburban voters, Mormons, etc.) Romney seems very likely to continue to pick up significant numbers of delegates throughout the campaign. To catch and pass Romney and secure 1,144 delegates, Santorum would have to begin winning significantly more delegates than Romney in a lot of places. To do that Santorum would need to change the dynamic of the election very soon, since we are nearing the halfway point of this primary.

A more likely path for Santorum would be winning enough delegates to prevent Romney from clinching, then emerging from a brokered convention as the candidate.  In some ways Gingrich might serve the purpose of forcing a brokered campaign if he could manage to draw delegates from both the Romney and Santorum campaigns. But with his viability at an end, his significant impact will dwindle. .

If Gingrich stays in the race, the math continues to favor Romney eventually securing enough delegates to clinch. The only likely event to change the current pattern would be if Gingrich were to drop out of the race and give Santorum a strong endorsement that caused his followers to shift significantly towards Santorum. The first step towards that was a Gingrich defeat in Alabama and Mississippi. The real question now is how long it takes Newt Gingrich to realize that any chance he had at the nomination is now genuinely over, and what Gingrich will do once he realizes that.

The only event coming up that could conceivably give Gingrich as good a chance to win as he had in Alabama and Mississippi is the Louisiana primary (46 delegates) on March 24. But I see no reason to think he will win in Louisiana as a diminished candidate when he couldn't win in Alabama or Mississippi when he was still viable. After the votes in Missouri (52 delegates, March 17), Puerto Rico (23 delegates, March 18), and Illinois (69 delegates, March 20.)  If it takes Gingrich until April to decide to drop out of the race, the math for Santorum could be truly daunting indeed.